Abstract
Since 2007 and the first financial crisis, most of the media have been talking about banks and financial subjects. The crisis is the consequence of subprime. Banks were exchanging these subprimes, also called toxic assets, between them that's why the crisis was spread at a global level. Most companies have faced bad results since 2007 and lot of them have disappeared from the industry. There were a lot of bankruptcies: Lehman Brothers was the most impressive one. Lots of companies were bought by healthier banks or saved by the government interventions. Since the beginning of the crisis, the function of governments in the industry is more important as they lend huge amount of money to the banks in order to avoid the bankruptcy of the whole bank system. This amount is count in hundreds billions of Euros or Dollars.
For 10 years, there were a lot of mergers and acquisitions; all these concentrations were due to an augmentation of competition and also to deregulation, innovation and the decreasing of middlemen. The two main reasons for banks to merge are keep their competitive positions and become a leader in a main region. This increase of competition leads to a higher difficulty for new entrants to establish because of the weight of former companies and national governments. Governments are more involved in the market. For example, in France, the government put in place OSEO which is a tool to help the economy to be more stable. Internet has a more important place in the banking system. It's a way to increase the activities and the efficiency of banks, to attract new consumers with fewer costs than before, and to offer more services. Its impact on the strategy is not insignificant.
